Down with this sort of thing (careful now)

Well, here beginneth my first ever attempt at a blog.

As our perennially-popular pontiff wends his self-satisfied way back home, swapping the shores of a Third-World nation for a Third-Century city-state, the satellite channel More4 appears to be taking advantage of the sudden lull in the saturation coverage of Ratzinger and presenting a more acceptable face of the Roman Catholic Church – in the shape of the wonderful evergreen classic Father Ted; specifically the episode called “The Passion of St. Tibulus.” For anyone unfamiliar with that episode, the title refers to a controversial film which the (unseen) Pope has condemned as blasphemous; and so, when it arrives on Ted’s home turf of Craggy Island, it falls to him and his cohort to deal with it.

The image of Fathers Ted and Dougal protesting outside the cinema daring to show the banned film, placards warning passersby with the slogans I borrowed for this post’s title, represents a softer, gentler, rather bemused and befuddled type of parish priesthood that perhaps still exists in the world, if only in the public imagination.